Starters

[Guest Hal Davis (MODEL A HAL)]

Everyone is familiar with electric starters and hand cranks. I have seen some horseless carriages with no starter. You just spun the flywheel by hand. What other types of starters were there on early automobiles? Were there any that started with a powder charge like some of the airplanes did? Others?

[Guest Hal Davis (MODEL A HAL)]

Where did they get the compressed air from? Hand pump? External source?

[Rick Hoover]

Hal, <P>One of our Mack trucks I ran back in the early 70's had a air starter. In fact, Roadway Express ran them on their Mack R-700's back then also. You had to be careful with somebody standing next to the truck that didn't know about them. You could send the person into orbit when you hit that starter button. The air was contained in its own seperate holding tank. <P> Rick

[Guest]

The Winton also had a compressed air starter, most of these devices were fed from a storage tank supplied by an engine driven pump.<BR>The Presto-lite acetylene starter was another fairly effective system which fed acetylene under pressure to the cylinders with a complicated distribution network operated from a dash mounted control, I have seen a restored one on a thomas flyer and was quite impressed by it.

[Guest]

We used to have an old locomotive that was started with a blank shotgun shell of some sort, I never had to start it but I had heard it made quite the noise. has anyone else seen this? How did it work?, I never had the chance to see the device in use or inspect the mechanism.

[ronbarn]

The Winton was even more sophisticated than Stellite mentioned. The six cylinder engine had a special valve arrangement that allowed the driver to cut out two of the cylinders while running and effectively convert those two cylinders into an air pump to fill the air tank. Then when the air tank had enough pressure the "switch" was pulled (turned?) and the car ran on all six again.

[Guest De Soto Frank]

"According to Dykes..."<P>There were also spring-wound starters, and I think that perhaps Owen-Magnetic (or another "unique" marque) used the windings in the flywheel to turn the engine over.(That motor/generator as transmission thing)<P>Also, they talk about cars with "trembler coil" ignition & batteries (I'm thinking Model "T" here), if there's enough fuel-air charge left in the cylinders, it's possible to "tickle" the coils and get a spark at the appropriate plug and get the engine to fire.<BR>(that one sounds a little optimistic to me ; have any "T" owners actually done this?)<P>The "explosive cartridge" starter might be the "Christensen" starter? Also used on some radial aircraft engines I believe.<P>Most of the big Diesels in tractors and locomotives used to use gasoline "pony motors" to turn over "big Rudolph".<P>My Uncle Mike had an experience with a Holt "Caterpillar" tractor down at Clark Field in Manilla around 1940: apparently this was one of the really ancient "canopied" Cats that was started by turning the flywheel by inserting a steel bar into holes drilled into the perimeter of the huge flywheel and pulling the engine over.(I assume that the magneto had some sort of impulse coupling to generate spark at "no engine speed").<BR>Well, apparently the Cat "sneezed", and that bar shot forth and caught my uncle in knee, which "swelled up like a cantalope" and sent him to the base hospital. (He said that was nothing compared to the Japanese a couple months later! )<P>It's kind of interesting to think that after 90-odd years, we're still using Mr. Kettering's "cash register drawer motor" to start our cars!

[Guest]

The 1913-14 Rambler had a flywheel generator which acted as a starter as well, Some early Fairbank-Morse model N stationary motors were started by a gunpowder filled shotgun shell once the flywheel mark was lined up.<BR>The british Trojan, a truly bizzarre 2 stroke auto had a pull starter.<BR>Some magneto equipped cars of 1908-1912 vintage had a novel starting arrangement whereby a battery operated buzz-coil was wired in series with the mag and you could spin the crank a couple of times to draw in mixture, walk over to the dash and press a button on the coil which then sent high tension current thru the mag. distributor to the proper cyl. firing it over 'til the mag took over.

[Dave@Moon]

L.I., Was that Prestolite acetlyene starter on the Thomas original equipment or an aftermarket device?

[Guest]

I believe that they were aftermarket, as I've seen ads for them hanging in Austie's old museum listing applications based on the number of cylinders, wish I knew more.

[1937hd45]

Frank, My 1912 T will start on compression, once it has warmed up. I never know for sure when it will do it, but it is a nice surprise. Flip the switch to battery, if it doesn't start right away move the spark lever, and it will start.

[Bob Kinker]

My 26 T will also start on compression.<BR>The big diesel engines in ships also use air to spin the starter. Just my 2 cents!

[Dave@Moon]

I've always been intrigued by the pneumatic starter, which used compressed air to spin the motor. It always seemed a little Rube Goldberg to me, even with 1900's technology. These were usaed on Wolseleys until 1919.<P>There were a number of cars that had an interior pull mechanism (think lawn mower engine) to start them, most notable would be the first year's Austin 7. The Horstman (according to one of my books, I've never personally seen one) had a foot operated mechanism (I presume similar to a motorcycle).<P>I'm sure there's more.

[Guest Hal Davis (MODEL A HAL)]

Chuck,<P>The blank shotgun shell is what I was refering to as the powder charge. I have heard of these things, but never seen one. I would be curious to know if they were the same gauge, etc as a particular shotgun shell, or was just similar enough that that is what people called them.<P>Some aircraft had a starter crank on the side of the plane that was obviously not direct drive to the crankshaft, but instead started a flywheel turning. I don't know if there was a clutch involved that could suddenly engage the engine to the flywheel or if the engine slowly turned the whole time this cranking was going on. I doubt there were any automobile engines heavy enough to have required this type of starter, but who knows.

[Chris Paulsen]

My 1913 Buick has a Prestolite acetylene starter, probably alot like the Thomas. It was standard equipment on the Model 30 and 31 Buicks of 1913.

[Guest]

About 1930, i witnessed a guy cranking an airplane engine on the side of the cowling.He started slowly, (you could tell it took a lot of effort), then when he finally got it to turn quite fast,it was engaged, and the engine started,Some years later,I was enrolled in an aircraft school and was told that the starter was called an "Inertia" starter.I later worked on Guiberson 9 cylinder radial air=cooled engines which used a shell,larger than a 10 gauge(but no pellets) to start it.The shell was fired ,and the pressure drove a piston,which worked like an old "Yankee" screwdriver,spinning the engine just several turns, Being a diesel,it needed no "choking"and usually started the first "shot" If you saw the movie "Flight of the Phoenix" you saw this taking place,though that engine may have beena gas job.

[Guest]

The American Simplex of the early 1900 vintage used an air starter. As I remember there was an air compressor driven by the engine which kept the air tank charged when driving. I believe there was a method of releiving compression on several of the cylinders when cranking.<BR>Peter that car is probably still in Tucson.

[Guest stude8]

I once had the thrill of driving a 1914 La France fire engine become speedster in Pennsylvania. This fire breathing monster had a displacement over 800 cubes!. It was a T head 6 cyl and of course no man alive could crank it so they had a gimic that shifted the exhaust valves open on several cylinders to relieve compression and you cranked it on 4 cyl's to start then shifted the cam shaft back it to run on all six.<BR>It would climb a grade in high gear at 250 rpm and you could almost count the ignition firings. What a machine. Stude8

[Guest Hal Davis (MODEL A HAL)]

Thanks to Methuselah for the details of the aircraft starters.<P>As for the pneumatic starters, was there an alternative starting method in case the pressure leaked down in the tank (other than roll it down a hill)?

[Dave@Moon]

I believe most cars had hand crank back-up starting systems for quite some time, even well into the Kettering system years. I know Triumphs came with back-up hand cranks into the 1950's, and were optionally equipped with them through 1967. (The small hole in the base of the TR4 grille is the opening for the crank handle, and there's a pass-through in the radiator core for it as well.)<P>Maybe someone knows which car was the first to be utterly dependant on the electrical (or even mechanical) starter, or a car made later than 1967 which still made allowances for hand cranking.

[Guest De Soto Frank]

For what it's worth,<P><BR>The Chevy truck still had "crank provisions" up through '53- complete with a relieved trough in the front gravel pan for the crank, as well as a "clearance arch" in the bottom radiator tank, and sometimes, a "swing-up" support tab on the front bumper!<P>By contrast, I'm pretty sure my '41 De Soto six doesn't have a crank jaw on the damper, and my '48 Chrysler definitely didn't.